Man goes viral on TikTok by reviewing canned fish

By Adam Dutton

A wacky Brit has become a global online sensation after racking up millions of views on TikTok by reviewing TINNED FISH from all over the world.

Marcus Ansell spends his spare time reviewing different types of fish, like sardines, trout, salmon and mackerel, and scoffs down around three tins a day.

The 32-year-old reckons he has now eaten over 1,000 tins of seafood since staring the project alongside his wife Lucy around a year and a half ago.

Marcus posts footage of himself opening and taste-testing tins, whether it be from his local supermarket or more exotic canned seafood shipped in from Japan.

He has reeled in millions of views for his videos and has more than 615,000 followers as a Tiktok 'tinfluencer' where is known to followers as @TinnedFishReviews.

Marcus is now recognized as the 'world’s leading online reviewer of tinned fish products' and as having a real-time effect on the sales of tinned seafood.

Marcus, of Newark, Notts., said: “I could never have imagined there was such an appetite for people watching videos of someone else opening a tin of fish and then taste-testing it."

Marcus started his videos 18 months ago when his sister sent him four different types of tinned fish for Christmas.

As a newcomer to TikTok, he decided to ask his wife, Lucy, to film him opening one of the tins and then giving his verdict.

The video, which featured bay mackerel in olive oil, was a hit, encouraging him to post another, this time featuring more mackerel in a hot and spicy sauce.

Marcus began featuring tins of tuna and sardines from his local supermarket and then deciding to get his dog, an eight-year-old Collie/Great Pyrenees cross called Arthur, in on the act.

Lucy, who is known on-screen as 'The Cameraman', does all of the filming and editing and Marcus now regularly receives packages containing dozens of tinned products every week.

His most popular video – which has six million views – shows him tucking into a tin of Surstromming, a lightly salted fermented Baltic Sea herring which smells so bad he has to open the can while holding it underwater.

Marcus said: “It all started for fun and I never expected anything to really happen, but it’s grown so much that I now get thousands of views online, loads of comments and dozens of tins to review delivered to me every month.

"I try to eat as many of them as I can.

“What’s lovely is when I get a box of products, there is often a note inside it from someone who has seen my video somewhere in another country and liked it so much that they went to the effort of sending me tinned fish to try.

“That really brings it home to me quite how popular the videos are and how people are enjoying what I’m doing.”

He has also been courted by various tinned fish companies, including the London-based The Tinned Fish Market, which invited him to the capital to try out its latest products.

Marcus also took part in a meet and greet – with Marcus reporting that the queue “went out of the shop and around the corner”.

His fame was confirmed when he posted a video reviewing the Tinned Fish Market’s Los Peperetes' ventresca (tuna belly) with Jersey butter.

Not only did it get thousands of views, it sparked a rush of orders and led to the company’s entire stock of the product selling out.

Since then, Marcus’ fame has grown even further, with one of his latest reviews, looking at Portuguese octopus in extra virgin olive oil, garlic and salt, getting over 310,000 views in one day.

He has also been name-checked by Romesh Ranganathan on Harry Hill’s “Are We There Yet?” podcast.

The comedian said Marcus was “making fish cool again” - and was given a mention in Waitrose Food magazine.

He added: “It’s amazing and really enjoyable, and being mentioned by Romesh on Harry’s podcast was fantastic.

"I’m a huge fan of both of them and I was delighted that they talked about me and what I was doing."

The global tinned fish market is said to be worth around one billion dollars.

The world’s biggest tuna exporter is Thailand, with Morocco selling the most sardines by volume and Portugal taking the title as home to artisanal, gourmet sardines.

Marcus said: “We went to Lisbon to visit a famous tinned fish restaurant called Sol e Pesca and we learned just why Portugal produces the best tinned fish in the world.

“They are also very keen on sardine roe, which is really time-consuming to harvest and costs about $50 a tin.

"I’m very lucky because The Tinned Fish Market sent me tins of that to review and it tastes amazing.

“It’s been very surprising, but probably what’s surprised me most is finding out how many small companies there are selling tinned fish and discovering that there is a huge variety of different products available.

“Some aren’t quite as nice as others, including the Surstromming, which really smells, is really salty and doesn’t have a very nice texture, which makes it a real challenge to eat.”